


Just Human Enough

by madlysanecatlady



Series: The Nice and Accurate Ineffable Husbands Compendium [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Asexual Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 15:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18967618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madlysanecatlady/pseuds/madlysanecatlady
Summary: Can demons retire? Can angels be selfish?





	Just Human Enough

It was raining. Or rather, it was putting on quite the good show of trying to rain, which was really all the same, thought Aziraphale as he looked glumly out the window of his old-new bookshop. A sad, single droplet of rain attempted to make a menacing rap on the dusty glass of the shop’s front window, but settled on a depressed little tap that most ears would barely bother registering. Aziraphale’s ears were not most ears, of course, and applauded the poor droplet’s efforts, even as the rest of the angel sat on his throne, really a poor facsimile of a stool, composed of dusty old tomes, nursing a long-empty cup of tea, simply staring out the window at nothing in particular. Or perhaps he was staring at everything in particular. He hadn’t quite worked that out for himself yet.

It was Monday. Fat orange tabbies with a penchant for lasagne everywhere were lamenting that fact loudly to anyone who would listen – namely poor lonely souls named John, who still hadn’t quite decided on whether or not they could actually hear the cats’ complaints. Aziraphale had never really had much thought to spare for Mondays in the past. They were much like any other day in the week to him. But this Monday was special. It was the Monday. The Monday that signalled that there would be other Mondays to come after it, precisely seven days following its final hour. The weekly cycle continued; the world continued to turn. Dust continued to find places to settle upon the old shelves and their tattered old and musty tenants. Really, Aziraphale thought, if the boy was going to the trouble of restoring the bookshop, the least he could do would be to make it dustless, at least for a few days.

He let out a quiet chuckle about nothing in particular before settling back into his dour posture. He felt rather silly, now he’d had time to think about it, for wondering if – no – hoping that the Sunday that followed that slight mess of a Saturday would just... continue. A perpetual Sunday. The ducks in the pond would remain ever-interested in the oddly-matched pair feeding them, the supply of bread would mysteriously seem endless, lunch in the Ritz would meld seamlessly with dinner as the wine and food flowed liberally and well, perpetually. The events of the near-apocalypse must have left him a tad dizzy, or perhaps a tad less intelligent. How else could he explain the mad hope that had crumpled within his chest the moment he awoke within his bookshop this morning (he was sleeping? Crowley must have been influencing him a bit more than he’d thought.) and stepped outside to find a morning paper proclaiming that it was indeed Monday today. And really, aside from the fine gentlemen in the calendar printing factories, who would know the date better than the printers of the local paper?

What had he been hoping for, exactly? An existence of endless Sunday? That sounded really rather boring after a while. How long could he expect to eat lunch? Or feed ducks? How long could he reasonably expect Crowley to put up with his ineffable goodness? Or rather, how long would it take the speedwheeling fallen angel to grow bored of a dusty old still-perfectly-afloat-thank-you-very-much angel? That was the real conundrum. What would come of The Arrangement now that Armageddon had, at least temporarily, been stayed? Would they maintain their, what was it, a friendship? Or would they simply settle into a slightly more quiet (at least for a little bit) lifestyle that didn’t involve frequent trips to the duck pond or the Ritz? These were the questions Aziraphale refused to ask himself for fear that acknowledging any of them would bring him answers he was not quite ready to hear, despite the fact that he had, of course, asked them in his head on near repeat since his eyes opened and he learned it was Monday.

The rain continued to half-heartedly pretend it was falling with any sense of regularity or force, and Aziraphale continued to stare out the window at it pretending to not ask himself questions he never wanted answers to. He thought he was hallucinating when a great black Bentley pulled into view and stopped at the curb in front of the bookshop’s window. He blinked so hard he saw stars when they reopened, falling once again upon the Bentley, this time with a fallen angel appearing out of the driver’s side door.

Crowley smiled crookedly at the bookshop before striding over to the door. Aziraphale shook himself fully from his stupor in enough time to realise he had completely forgotten to unlock the door that morning. Wondering at just how distracted he would have to be in order to forget such a trivial thing as that, he hurried over to the glass door in time to see Crowley bemusedly pulling at the locked door before he seemed to clue into the fact that the door was merely locked and not attempting to insult him and simply imagined that the door were instead unlocked.

‘Late to wake the little bookies up this morning, angel?’ he drawled lazily as he sauntered in past the bemused angel in question and looked around. ‘You’re right though, the kid did a bang up job all things considered. Could’ve dusted for you, though.’

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Aziraphale said after a moment of convincing himself he was not having some sort of hallucination and that Crowley was indeed here talking to him, leaving finger trails in the dust along some of the nearest shelves. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘I’m feeling in rather a tempting mood this morning and thought I might tempt an angel to breakfast,’ Crowley shrugged with an easy grin. ‘I happen to know a certain angel shares my certain penchant for sweet pastries and I know a lovely creperie not too far from here. Tempted?’

‘You’re quite good at your job, dear demon,’ Aziraphale smiled after a moment’s pause. ‘Please, do lead the way.’

Crowley led the way out of the bookshop without further ado, going around the car to open the passenger door for his friend, watching him fold elegantly into his seat so Crowley could snap the door shut. Crowley had often heard Aziraphale refer to himself as rather ducklike – all waddly and inelegant, but Crowley rather thought him a swan. When he wasn’t fussing too much about it, the angel really did have a fluid elegance to him as he moved around, or really, even as he sat still. Crowley was honestly beginning to wonder if he wasn’t just terribly biased and making the whole swan comparison up. It didn’t matter to him, made up or no, Swanlike and Elegant was simply how he imagined Aziraphale to generally be, and things he imagined were always how they were, even the things he truly couldn’t change, ineffability be damned, or blessed, or whatever.

‘Do we even have jobs anymore?’ Crowley wondered, sliding into the driver’s seat. ‘I was under the impression Armageddon was our job and we were sort of terrible at it.’

‘We do seem rather too incompetent to be kept on either payroll, now you mention it,’ Aziraphale shrugged, looking sideways at the wry smile on Crowley’s face. He felt his brow furrow, as if it knew something the rest of him hadn’t quite worked out yet. ‘Why do you ask? Something on your mind, I presume?’

‘Not really, it’s just, well, I’m not sure I fancy doing it anymore even if I do still have work to do,’ Crowley said after an endless minute of silent driving and ponderation.

‘But you said you felt like tempting people today,’ Aziraphale was properly confused. ‘So you’re doing your job while not wanting to do it anymore?’

‘You’re an easy mark, angel, you and I both know that,’ Crowley’s face settled into a familiar soft smile that had Aziraphale unconsciously relaxing every time he saw it. ‘But me and the plants were having a chat last night and well, we sort of came to the conclusion that I might quite like to retire.’

‘Retire? Can demons retire?’ Aziraphale wondered, looking out the window at all the zigzagging traffic Crowley was effortlessly dodging around. He often marvelled at the smoothness Crowley was able to achieve in his driving through sheer force of will. He was generally quite used to the demon and his stubborn will, but still felt a mild sense of surprise when he really paid attention to the feats and he realised just how gifted the fallen angel had become in his time on Earth.

‘Well, I don’t actually know,’ said Crowley after a beat, effortlessly parking the Bentley in a spot that just so happened to be right in front of the little restaurant. ‘Can angels, for that matter? But I can’t imagine they’d want to keep us on after that fiasco.’

‘A fair speculation,’ Aziraphale slid out of the car and fell into step with his best friend, his only friend really, if he were being honest.

‘Angels first,’ Crowley said brightly, pulling open the door for him with a flourish. They stepped inside, the bright and simple elegance of the room welcoming them warmly. The tables were all small and round, sitting either two or four people. This did not seem to be the type of place that welcomed large crowds, a fact solidified by the severe lack of square footage. Aziraphale counted about twelve tables and thirty-six seats crammed as elegantly as possible into the tiny space of the dining area. The hostess just happened to have the perfect two-person round booth by the window free, despite the rather large number of couples who appeared to be waiting for their seats as they arrived, and led them to it.

Crowley slid in smoothly – at first – after the angel had settled in, but upon seeing Aziraphale smile up at him warmly, he fumbled a little, still a little rattled by all that damnation and punishment threatening he had dealt with mere days ago. He knew he should be used to the angel’s ineffable kindness by now, but well, he was an agent of Hell after all, he hadn’t come to expect kindness from anyone, certainly not from angels.

His angel had always been different, of course. Ever since their first meeting, Aziraphale had been cordial, if not outright friendly. Although tentative and more annoyingly closed-off and good in the beginning, Crowley had watched him get more comfortable through their millennia on Earth together, watched him do selfish things every so often. He had then, of course, had to endure the self-recriminations that came after a selfish angel act, but they were starting to become farther and fewer in between. He wanted to see his angel be able to spread his wings and just do as he liked without the guilt.

‘If I could, I think I would quite like to retire,’ Aziraphale announced thoughtfully, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen while they received their coffees. ‘Isn’t that a sore sight? An angel who’s tired of needing to do good things for people because he’d rather spend his time reading. I must be spending too much time with you, dear, you’ve corrupted me.’

‘I don’t think it’s me,’ Crowley frowned, not in hurt or disagreement, but rather in puzzlement. ‘It’s been playing on my mind a lot lately, what’s the real driving force in our choices and such... I think it’s them.’ He swept a lazy hand around in the direction of the entire dining room.

Aziraphale’s eyes scanned along the hand’s wake, narrowing in confusion. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever met any of these fine diners before, Crowley. I don’t see how they would have any sort of driving influence on our lives.’

‘You,’ Crowley knocked the angel’s knee with his own playfully. ‘Can be so wonderfully obtuse sometimes, angel. Humans. In general. I think we’ve gone native in a serious way. We’re, well, still ourselves and all that, but after all this time, how could we expect to not become just a little humanlike? How else to you explain us just... choosing to stop the end of the world? We aren’t supposed to have free will are we? Yet, well, here we still are having breakfast on Earth instead of getting all ruffled out on the battlefield.’

‘Hmm,’ Aziraphale descended into thought, barely noticing when their waiter returned to take their order, Crowley merely ordering for them both as his companion continued to follow his thoughts where they led. He looked up finally after several minutes. ‘If that’s so, then I think I should like to retire. It’s a very human thing to do, isn’t it?’

‘The plants and I wondered if you wouldn’t come to that same decision,’ Crowley smiled. His smile faltered a little and he fidgeted with his silverware as he forced himself to carry on with his train of thought. ‘And when we were chatting about retirement plans and everything, well, we figured we might like to find us a nice cottage somewhere in the countryside to live in, all quiet and peaceful like, but the plants did worry I might get lonely and maybe a little stir crazy. Retirement can get lonely if you do it on your own.’

Aziraphale stared at the demon in front of him. Had he actually just proposed that they retire to the countryside together? He had to admit, the mental picture painting itself in his mind’s eye was beyond alluring. He smirked. He had felt from the moment they had met in the Garden that this sneaky little serpent would become a fixture in his life, but he could never have foreseen this. ‘Crowley, are you –’ he began slowly.

‘You could come, if you wanted,’ Crowley rushed through his words, visibly nervous. ‘It could have all sorts of space for old books and things. And the plants would like more room to spread out I think, and I mean, you don’t have to, of course, it was merely an errant thought; it’s not as if I’ve been planning something like this for days or anything, that would be ridiculous, but I hear cottages are nice to retire in for humans, and well, if we’re being more human...’

‘We could have a pond,’ Aziraphale cut in with a smile. ‘Not too large a pond, but one big enough for some fish, and maybe some ducks to nest in if they’d like. We could feed them as much as we wanted and not have anything boring or apocalyptic to talk about, but could instead just enjoy feeding them. And we could start a little garden, maybe grow some vegetables to learn to cook with. Or well, is that perhaps too human for us?’

Crowley answered the angel’s smile with an impossibly brighter one. ‘No, just human enough, I think.’

‘Then I think retirement will be quite nice,’ Aziraphale held up his cup of coffee to toast. ‘To being just human enough.’

Crowley smiled and clinked their cups together. 


End file.
